1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system to automatically determine an agglutination image type.
2. Description of the Related Art
Background Art
According to a method currently available to determine a reaction image type formed by the agglutination reaction to inspect the blood group and infectious diseases, it is a common practice to determine the reaction image type automatically using an apparatus and then observe the reaction image with the naked eye to check that the automatic determination exhibits no problem. In the automatic determination, the agglutination image or the nonagglutination image is determined by the light amount change rate based on the overall contrast or the degree to which the boundary with a substance is blurred (Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 4-72547).
Also, with the aim of approximating the automatic determination to the recognition by human being, a method has been proposed, as an example, in which a video image is processed and the agglutination image or the nonagglutination image is determined three-dimensionally based on the mean particle density and the accumulation amount in a certain concentration layer (Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication Nos. 9-145594 and 3-108638).
In these conventional automatic determination methods, the abnormality of the intended part is liable to be highlighted excessively. Even in the case where an agglutination image can be apparently observed as a whole, therefore, the proper determination may not be made.
Under the circumstances, therefore, a visual inspection is conducted on an image which cannot be determined accurately.